Un Vent Gentil
by Sour Schuyler
Summary: Ryou finds Malik in England? Maybe Ryou will learn a little bit about cause and effect à la Malik. The title means A Gentle Wind in French. Supposed to be stylishly humorous. Nobody ever really talks like this.


_Un Vent Gentil_

_(A Gentle Wind)_

_by Sour Schuyler, Oct. 20 2004_

Now, Ryou's aunt lived in Milsburrow, England, about an hour away from his father's Islington flat. She had cordially invited him to spend the week there, insisting that "A growing boy needs plenty of fresh air." Both father and son gladly assented.

It was a little past midday, and Ryou strolled appreciatively down the street which parallelled the small village's water supply. The sun shone brilliantly, and the resevoir spewed iridescent beads up from it's choppy waters. Perched on the shaded bank of the water, was a lean boy in his teen years. Platinum hair blew gently behind him as he stared upon the waters with tortured, violet eyes.

"Malik?" Ryou inquired, intensely curiously. His nose twitched, very much like a rabbit's. It was a habitual portrayal of his inquisitve nature. Sans le préambule, the lean teenager nodded and leaned forward. He was curiously reposing underneath the shade of a rather gigantuous tree -- Ryou believed that it may be an oak -- and hugging his knees. The breeze blew his hair back, and for a moment Ryou's noise was tickled by the intangible smell of salt water -- Malik was reminiscing of Battle City. Ryou could feel it in his bones.

"I feel lower than low," Malik informed him. Ryou plopped down beside him.

"You should. This is the nadir of the valley."

"That's not what I meant," the Egyptian boy growled.

"Cheer up!" Ryou solaced, ever chipper. Then he squinted into the water's slightly blackish, shallow depths. He thought he saw a fish.

"Why should I?" Malik lamented brashly. "I have to say goodbye to crime forever."

Ryou, startled by his newly refound companion's response, quizically demanded, "But isn't that a good thing?"

"No. Innopportune timing for it too, I'm afraid." As Malik heaved a heavy sigh the officious British teenager realized with a happy start that even the bronzed deliquent had picked up bits and pieces of the English dialects. Delighted, he carried on with interrogating unabashed, overwhelmed with amour for his place of birth.

"You wouldn't suppose then that a pure life would be much safer in time for the Rapture...?" Ryou hitched breath, realizing his politically incorrect assumption.

"I mean," Ryou caught himself, safeguarding his words, "besides the Christian immoralness of it all, and I'm sure in whatever religion you are too, if you're caught vandalizing, you could --"

"--Be saved by the charming ways of my plutocrat sister," Malik finished Ryou's sentence in ways the embarrassed teenager hadn't meditated upon. Malik continued on, in a pugnent tone: "Thus, I can be as venal as I want. After all, the police are too." Malik spat at the supple grass. "You're too inquisitive."

Ryou blinked, pondering the remonstration thoroughly.

"...It's not against the law, you know," he finally defended. Malik clamped his arms in a cross and scowled in what Ryou mused was a deceivingly cute manner. Amane used to pout just the same way.

"Well it should be," Malik muttered, glowering at the grass in a way that made him look extremely bird-like.

"But why steal?"

Malik's eyes widened in sheer astonishment of Ryou's unabashed inquiry -- or, as he called, stupidity.

"You're dense. You know that the apex of my life was during Battle City, when I thought that I was going to beat the Pharaoh and gain all his powers." Malik huffed -- or sighed? Ryou couldn't tell.

"When I realized what I was doing was wrong, and attempted to help Yugi obliterate my more devious side... the side that was born when I received the Tombkeeper's Intiation," -- Ryou shivered here -- "I overdramatized the whole thing in my mind, making it like some soap opera. I think... that's the only way I survived." Ryou glanced at Malik oddly.

"I thought," he said slowly, enunciating each word, "that life was supposed to be drastic, radical, like a great book that everybody wants to read because it's so ironic and exciting and humorous." Malik slumped. "When Battle City ran out of yarn to spin, I realized that normal people's lives are so... boring. I didn't want that to be my life.

"You know how they say a life of crime is exciting? Stealing actually pumps adrenaline through your body. Adrenaline equals excitement, right? So, I thought I'd be a vandal. After all, working in Ishizu's museum only gets so interesting. By the way, your nose twitching reminds me of a rabbit."

Ryou nodded agreeably, even though he thought that a museum life would actually be a terribly educational and resplendid experience. He should know, what with his father being in the line of work that he was an all. He supressed any comments that he might have, however, as he was deeply fascinated with what his acquaintance had to say. Somewhere behind the two of them, a Basset hound bayed.

"Unfortunatly!" Malik spat so malignantly and with such tenacity that Ryou jumped back. Malik continued just as balefully: "Unfortunately, now my fascinating era has officially come to an end due to an overly concerned sister!"

"Who probably spends more money on keeping you out of jail then she does for food."

"You don't understand."

Ryou understood perfectly well.


End file.
